All We Ever Find
by Jessy-Anne
Summary: Bella finds herself dealing with the death of her parents. The heartache she feels will threaten her existence as she knows it. What will it take to make her see that she was never and will never be alone?


Author's Note- This is my first attempt at writing fanfiction, that being said please be gentle. I understand that this isn't perfect and I would gladly take constructive criticisms, but please don't just "OMG you suck". The only thing that tells me is my writing isn't for everyone, which I already know.

I must now thank loopylou992 for all the help you have given me since I decided I might share this with people :D If you haven't read her stories you must, Now. Karma Killer is so good so far, and I know I'm not alone in waiting for an update... Also a thanks to Vampmama who also has helped me a lot on this journey :D she writes some killer stories and if you haven't read them you are missing out. One more then I swear I'm done, EVERY single person in Beta Babes and Grammar Gropers on FB for the encouragement and words of wisdom. They are such lovely people... You should definitely join them :D

I do not own Twilight or any of the characters in it... I do own my idea though, and I would appreciate if no one took it :D

I also do not own the songs that this o/s was based off of. That would be Tim McGraw. He is amazing, while I don't particularly like country, I would listen to him everyday. Links to the songs are-

If I Died Today- youtube(dot)com/watch?v=nv9ZUDAKhdg

All We Ever Find- youtube(dot)com/watch?v=LqIWFyHR-KA

**All We Ever Find**

Why was this happening to me? What had I done to deserve this? I didn't have my mom or dad to help me through it this time. My heart is aching so badly, I would have sworn that the pieces they took from my heart made it hurt even to breath and yet there was no hope that the pain would ever go away.

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My whole life I'd kept mostly to myself, I never thought that being popular was a big deal. I would rather have had true friends than people who liked me when it was convenient for them. That was why at twenty-one I could count my friends on one hand. Alice, Angela, and Rosalie. Pathetic? I knew it was, but I'd wanted true friends and they were truer than anyone could hope to find. After high school, we took a year off travelling together across the US. That was the best year of my life. Back then, everything was looking up for me, in the autumn I would be starting UW, I had my three best friends, my parents were so supportive of me and what I planned for my life, and my future was completely laid out in front of me.

Unfortunately for me, Ali and Rose were at school in Europe and Angela was in Penn State, which is on the other side of the country. However, those two years had gone by so quickly, full of studying and trying to stay close to my friends, even given the distance between us. Living my life took up so much time that I barely noticed it had been so long since I heard from my parents.

It wasn't as if it was months since I'd heard from them, but they normally called twice a week to check up on me and see that I had everything I needed. After my mom missed her normal calling time I had started to get nervous and called her instead. I had a feeling of foreboding that wouldn't leave the bottom of my stomach no matter how much I tried to shake it. Mom didn't answer the phone and I started to think maybe she just went out, but she and dad never went out on days we were supposed to talk. They were my only tether to the Washington area, and knew that the only reason I didn't leave with Ali and Rose for Europe or Angela to Penn State was because I couldn't even think about not having them within driving distance. So they _always _made sure to show me they appreciated the choice I made by our phone calls. That desperate fear dug deeper as I called both of their cells only to have the answering machines greet me.

Normally, I was the one out of our group that would keep a level head, not one to get angry or upset easily. Nevertheless, I genuinely freaked the hell out. I called the house once again with the thought that maybe, just maybe, they couldn't hear their phones or they had just got back from the store and had forgotten their phones. That was something mom and dad would do. They never remembered their phones when going out and the store always took longer than they thought it would. That _had _ to be it; they were just at the store and ran late.

I waited another two hours before calling Forks PD where dad worked to check if maybe he was called into work and mom went to help with the dispatching, which she did sometimes. Okay I was _really _ grasping for straws but what else could I do. I was scared they didn't answer or call me back. However, when Billy my dad's best friend and deputy, answered with he had not seen or heard from Charlie or Renee since the day before at brunch I knew that something was wrong. Deep down I felt it and I knew that nothing in the world would keep them from calling me back three hours after we were supposed to talk, not if everything was as it should be. Billy readily agreed with me and told me that he would go and check on them for me. Then he would have them call me immediately. Twenty minutes later I found myself curled in a tiny ball, sobs tore through my body. They sounded inhuman even to my ears. Needless to say the call I got was not from Charlie or Renee, but instead a distraught Billy.

Billy found mom and dad murdered in their home. More than likely by someone dad had put in jail. The anger I'd felt was overwhelming and I didn't know what else to do except cry. Growing up, I had loved the fact my dad was protecting people by putting the criminals behind bars, not that there was much for him to do in the sleepy town of Forks, but I came to hate his job. His chief status was what took him away from me and not only did it take him, it took my mother away too. The woman I wanted to be just like when I finally found someone to settle down with. Hours after Billy's call I was still in the same position, crying the same frightening cry with no plans to do anything else for the foreseeable future.

When I woke up, it was to the sunlight streaming in the window as if my entire world had not crumbled apart a few short hours before. At least then I was calm enough to think about what everything meant, which only lasted as long as it took to remember the call from Billy last night. I needed my friends and I needed them right then. The only problem was they had lives that didn't revolve around me, even if they had wanted to come home and stand by me they were all _at least _ a six-hour plane ride away. Plus I hadn't even spoken to Angie for three weeks. Why call her then when I hadn't called her in so long? That would have made me as bad as those people I never wanted to be my friends. Alice and Rose were having such a great time and I wanted to be a good friend and meant I didn't want to burden them with the pain. That was mine alone to bear. Yet if she had been alive, I would have run straight to mom to ask what I should do. I couldn't see how could do it without falling apart?

Weeks passed and I started blowing off calls from the girls. I still couldn't go a day without breaking down and they didn't deserve to deal with my emotional bullshit. Alice had even sent her brother to check on me a few times. I'd heard the door and knew I should answer, if for no other reason than to get him to go away, but I couldn't get up the strength to move from my spot on the floor in front of my couch. My health was no longer a concern, I figured besides Alice, Rosalie, and Angela who would have even notice I wasn't around.

If I would have died would I have been able to deal with my regrets, would I have felt the need to be ashamed? Would my parents have seen how weak I was and be disappointed in me? Would anyone havehave shown up at my funeral? All of those questions swirled through my mind without pause and it started to make me dizzy, or maybe a few weeks without any real food and as little to drink took their toll on me. Would anyone have bothered to write an obituary to put in the Sunday paper? If so what would it have said, no one really knew me besides my friends and their family. How sad my life had become. I would have had no one to write true, nice, personal things about me. I would have been just another body to bury in a lonely grave without an epitaph written on my tombstone because no one knew me anymore. I had pushed the only people that know me away. And apparently I had pushed them to send Edward and wasted his time because he checked on me. I wished they would've stopped. It wasn't like it really mattered anymore, like I mattered anymore, so why burn his precious daylight. He was always so nice but that is just the kind of person he was, he didn't care what happened to me. With that thought, I had dragged myself toward my on-suite with unsteady legs and a haze that surrounded me.

When I didn't answer the door after the fifth week, Edward got the apartment manager to let him inside. Everything looked fuzzy and just _wrong_. I saw Edward and Felix, my apartment manager, but they didn't pay me any attention as I screamed at them to leave me alone. They acted like I wasn't even there, which hurt more than I thought it would, as I was the one who pushed Edward, Alice, Rosalie, and Angela away. If they they were there to check on me why would they ignore me like that, was I just an afterthought? Were they just there to see if I moved out without telling anyone? That thought had diminished as quickly as it came when Edward's smooth voice started calling my name. Could they not see me right in front of their faces?

Felix started walking to the kitchen; meanwhile, Edward wanders towards my room. Apparently, neither one of them cared I was sitting on the couch just waiting for them to acknowledge me. Edward's strangled sob called to me, though it sounded more like he was pleading with me than asking where I was. I reached Edward only seconds before Felix burst in. I could not fathom what I saw. My body lay in a pile in between my bedroom and the en-suite. The color my cheeks normally held in Edward's presence noticeably gone, my lackluster brown eyes devoid of life, and my normally healthy body was fragile and waiflike. What's more was the way Edward was looked at me as if my death ripped his heart painfully from his chest. He looked like I felt when I'd found out about my parent's deaths, but that made no sense. We were never that close, as I had said, he was nice but we really only spent time together when we were at Ali's house for a movie or dinner. He had never spent a lot of time with us. When we had dinner, he would stay only the amount of time considered polite then left. Why would my death have affected him so much?

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Three days have gone by as I watched not only the Cullen's, Hale's, Webber's and Black's mourn but the rest of Forks as well. I had never thought that that many people would care if I lived or died and as I saw my best friends home from their respective schools because of me, it broke my heart. They were going to be so behind in their studies, all for nothing. Alice's typical cheer was replaced with perpetual sadness, Rosalie's normally gentle eyes had turned hard and bitter, Angela acted as the preacher's daughter and was sad but said, "At least she's in a better place." Again, the hardest was the pain and regret anyone who was really looked could clearly have seen on Edward's otherwise handsome face. My second, third, fourth, and fifth parents' pain was palpable as they thought of how hard it would be to bury their children as they saw how hard it was to bury someone else's child, given a child who was part of the family since elementary school, but still not blood.

The entire town was there when they lowered my body into the ground and they listened intently, as did I, to the words spoken by the people I expected would speak for me, Alice, Angela, and Rose, and then one I came to realize cared more than I ever thought, Edward. My best friends, my sisters, told everyone how "kind, loving, and unselfish" I was, along with how their hearts would forever have a piece missing because I was no longer around to fill it. My heart, that was apparently no longer beating, broke more and more with each tear shed from the real angels that were in my life. I was not worth the anguish they went through and wished I could fix everything, that I could have been their own personal Superwoman.

Then Edward stood on the podium and started his speech, "The world will never be the same. The world was a much better place when Bella was part of it. I never got the chance to tell her what I thought of her. How wonderful I thought she was." his voice shook as he started off his speech.

"I always thought I would have time to tell her that she inspired me and made me want to be a better person. That I was so glad my sister brought her into my life all those years ago." he paused to wipe some of the tears that left his eyes before he began again.

"No, I never got the chance to tell her that I loved her, and always have, well I guess now is the only chance I get. You know she would hate this if she were here; she hated having everyone's attention on her.

"Never will I meet another person like Bella, with beauty ingrained in every part of her being. Of course, anyone could see the beauty she held on the outside, her lively brown eyes, dark chocolate hair, and her features appearing as if they were arranged by the angels themselves. However, the beauty on the inside, the simple beauty of her heart, in every breath of who she was, the beauty our families all were able to see, _that_ was a beauty to behold.

"I regret that I never told her how I felt, that I never got closer to her, and when my sister moved that I never kept in touch with her. Maybe if I had then we wouldn't have to be here right now." The guilt was clear on his face as he spoke in between his barely concealed sobs. "Missing an angel, whom we thought God was giving us, but now find out it was only temporary, that he needed her more than we did. Not that I can argue with him, but I only wish he would see we needed her more than could be seen at first glance, even though she would never see how much she meant to everyone here.

"I just hope that she is happy where she is and knows that we love her, miss her, and wish she were still here with us." Everyone had tears rolling down their faces, but the worst of all was Edward. He looked like his life was over and his speech was the last nail in his coffin. My heart that already had many fissures broke completely and fell to pieces on the ground at my feet at the sight of his grief-stricken face.

My mind replayed his speech over again and the shattered pieces clenched when I realized he thought so highly of me and then seized completely when I realized he said he loved me and always did. The intensity in his eyes, which were swimming with tears even before he had begun, surprised me. Never before had I noticed how his eyes were the color of the most beautiful blue-green ocean or how his hair, in all its unruly glory, was a dark coppery color, not quite auburn but not strawberry blonde either, together with his eyes and pale complexion he is more handsome than should be allowed. I always knew he was handsome and I would continuously blush every time I was in his presence, but never allowed myself to think about it more than that. Oh well, all that thinking was for naught because I would never get the chance to spend time with him again and I would never get the opportunity to lay wrapped tightly in his arms while he hummed soft lullabies as he lulled me to sleep.

Although I'd had no real reason to go back to my apartment, I wanted to see it one final time. I had been through everything imaginable in that apartment. Rose and Ali told me about the first men they met on campus, to the first men that broke their hearts on the same campus and when Angela declared that she and Ben were engaged. Even though they weren't in the apartment when they told me about it I squealed for the good news and tried to cheer up them up when it was bad, but it was always in my apartment for me. As I walked through the entryway to the living room I relived all the good times that I had. I continued to walk through the hallway and reached my bedroom. I focused on where Edward had found my body and sat in there. As I sat in that spot, I felt different than I had those past few days, it felt as if it were possible for everything to just go back to the way it was if only I tether myself to that place long enough. I closed my eyes and just sat as still as possible with the heart wrenching reality closing in on me.

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There was a loud pounding at the front door. I knew that it was no use for me to try to open the door, but I couldn't help but try. I wanted my life back, I wanted to have the chance to love and receive love in return. I'm positive my mom and dad wouldn't have wanted me to die just because they died. They didn't die by choice, yet I almost killed myself. To my surprise, my door opened with little effort, only to be met by the very man I'd started to realize I had feelings for and he looked at me, _really_ looked at me, not through me like last time I had seen him in my apartment. He reached out and wrapped me in his arms. He sighed, seemingly in relief, which made me feel like not everything would fall apart at the seams.

"Bella, what's been going on? Alice and Rose have been worried sick. Mom and dad told me about your parents, I am so sorry. Why did you not answer for me, Bella? You can tell me anything you know that, right? That I will never judge you. You can trust me, you can fall apart; know that I am here for you Bella. Please just do not shut me out again. I know that we have never been especially close before, but it hurt to know that you were alone after what happened to your parents. Just promise me that you know I'm here for you and not just because Ali asked me to." He finished his speech, all the while, he held me closer as he went on.

"Edward. I don't know what is going on. I can't do this anymore, I feel like I am dead and just imagining this all. I have been alone, except the calls that I have rejected from the girls and I don't know that this is real anymore." I hoped he understood that I couldn't possibly believe him, especially since I knew that I had been dead for days. Granted, I didn't feel the same as I did and everything was so much clearer, but there was no way that I could dream that up. Could I have? So lost in my own thoughts I almost missed what he said.

"Bella, can I please come in? I know you probably don't want me here, and I understand that, but you don't look good. When was the last time you ate anything?" His gaze searched for answers that my face wouldn't reveal.

The questions he asked didn't make sense to me, so I decided to ask what the date was. Maybe that would help me to figure out what the hell was going on. I didn't expect his answer though. "It is the fifteenth Bella, a little over a month from your parents' death. Now how long has it been since you had a decent meal?"

Well that's fucking confusing, I died on the sixteenth. At least that is what the death certificate said after Carlisle performed the autopsy. Could it all have been a dream? Does that mean that Edward never felt or said any of those things? Was I making it all up to feel a little better about being so solitary for so long? Shit. I guess I was quiet for too long because he pulled back to look at me, which effectively pulled me from my exhausting thoughts.

"Are you okay? Do you need to sit down? Can I get you anything? Please Bella just tell me what I can do for you." The concern in his eyes spoke louder than words ever could, even if they came from his lips.

Maybe it was a dream, maybe I'd made it all up, or maybe the powers above wanted to show me that people did care about me before it was too late. In the end though, did it _really _ matter? Edward was there with me trying to make sure that I was okay and that I knew he was there for me. I knew that I loved him, with the help of whatever had been happening to me over those past few days. I really wanted him to know, just in case my dream came true, that I loved him even if it was all a dream and he feels differently than I did.

"Edward, can I tell you something? I understand if you feel uncomfortable, but I really just need to get this off my chest." As I finished, he just looked at me with concerned eyes.

"Bella, I told you, you can tell me anything. Hell, if you want, we can just stay here and lock ourselves away from the outside world. As long as I know you are okay and here with me, I don't really care."

With his declaration, I felt more confident that the right choice was to tell him. I took his hand in mine and moved to sit on the couch. I wanted to be at least the most comfortable I could be in that situation.

"I love you Edward. I know it sounds silly considering we really only talk when Ali is around, but I had a horrible dream and I realized that it's the truth. Edward, I dreamed I died and you were the one to find me." I chanced a quick peek at his face before I quickly looked back at our hands and continued.

"When I saw how sad you looked at seeing my body in a lifeless heap on the floor, my heart broke. I never want to see your face crumpled in that way. The only people I was concerned about before that dream, at least consciously, were Alice, Angela, and Rose, but during the dream I realized I cared about you more than just as Alice's brother. I loved you and I wanted you to love me too. So badly that I imagined that you would be heartbroken that I died. I understand if you want to leave now, but that was weighing so heavily on my mind and if something were to happen to me, I would want you to know that I loved you. Even if this moment is all we ever find, I will be happy because now you know how I feel. Thank you Edward, for everything you've done here and in my subconscious without knowing it." After my quick glance I had kept my eyes only on our hands until I was finished, then I chanced another look at his face, even though I knew if he was disgusted I would be crushed. His face held no disgust, shock yes but no disgust, and that made me feel better about my decision.

"Never have I heard anything so ludicrous Bella. I mean, _really_? How could you think that way?" He appeared angry, which was not what I was trying for at all. As he continued his face softened and the anger disappeared. "How could you think I would be anything but absolutely broken if you weren't here anymore? I love you too, Bella. I may not have ever told you, but it was only because I thought you would laugh or feel uncomfortable around me and I could not imagine a life where you were not in it at least in a small part. Please understand what I am trying to say and please do not run away or give up. I _need_ you to stay alive, Bella, do you understand?" There was a kind of sincerity in his voice that I never could imagine would be for me.

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Time passed and though I was still hurting from the piece of my heart my parents took with them when they left the earth, I had a hope that the future could be okay. I knew that I could sit with him and say exactly how I feel and I would know that it is all real. I could tell him about my dreams and what I think love means, while we locked out the world outside of us. While we enjoyed the moments we would find with each other. With every breath, we told a tale of love grown from pain, but still intrinsically hopeful, knowing we found our forever in one another.

Never again would I be alone and truly, I never was. I just pushed everyone away, it didn't stop their love or hopes to be there for me, all it did was made me feel like shit when they finally found their way in. The only regret I have was that it took so much to acknowledge it in the long run. I lost my parents, but I did not lose my family. I needed to embrace the time I had, not only with Edward, though he was a big reason I felt that way, but also my friends, the friends I thought would be better off without me. We were family and always will be.

Only heaven could know what happened between my dreams and my reality, but I find it mattered less and less because I had everything I needed and I wouldn't have had it if it weren't for whatever powers that be, and Edward.


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